


Hurt

by SweetDeath



Category: Donnie Darko (2001)
Genre: "like" confessions lol, Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Death, F/M, Fear, Fear of Death, Friends to Lovers, Friendship, Gender unspecified reader, Happy Ending, Implied/Referenced Suicide, Kissing, Love Confessions, M/M, Other, POV Second Person, Reader-Insert, Reader-Interactive, Sad with a Happy Ending, discussion of fear, not DYING but discussion of death, not exactly more like... a possibility of suicide?, not really a tag but there's emotions that are suppressed then not, reader - Freeform, therapy fic, vent fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-23
Updated: 2019-07-23
Packaged: 2020-07-11 22:10:17
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,944
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19935301
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SweetDeath/pseuds/SweetDeath
Summary: I hurt myself todayWherein, you and Donnie contemplate death...to see if I still feel... and experience the side effects of living.I focus on the pain / the only thing that's real





	Hurt

**Author's Note:**

> !! wow!! welcome to the first donnie darko/reader fic on ao3 (and tumblr too? and definitely luna bc they don't even have a tag for donnie darko yet!) that's exclusively about Donnie Darko, and not part of a multi fandom series!!
> 
> I'm so happy to be the first to have written this, even though it came out 18 years ago!
> 
> I've been in love with Jake Gyllenhaal recently so I watched Donnie Darko, immediately fell in love, and wrote this.
> 
> This is a combination of character study, a vent fic, and an exploration of death. What can I say, I'm fascinated... this was originally inspired by "Hurt" by Nine Inch Nails, but I moved away from that... you can see it in the beginning though! 
> 
> Please enjoy, and leave a comment if you can!

“Donnie? Do you ever think of what it would be like to be dead?”

Donnie raises his eyes over the edge of his book. 

“All the time.”

You pick at your nails and let your head fall slowly over his legs. “Me too.”

Donnie goes back to his book. He tries to. But the way your rest over his lap, he can see how  _ deep _ the curve of your spine is, how your ass is propped up right next to him, how you lay, face down and tangled in his legs... You’re distracting. You’re distracting him. 

_ Misery _ can wait. 

“Did you want to talk about it?” He asks, dog-earring his page and setting it aside. “Or were you just thinking out loud?”

You hum and sigh rolling over on your back. Donnie knows you’re uncomfortable because the way your elbows dig into his thighs is sore for him, and he doesn’t want to think about the damage his knees are doing to your back. But you don’t move. Instead, you close your eyes.

_ Peaceful, but painful, _ Donnie thinks. Sums you up very nicely.

“I think,” you drawl, finally arching up and off him to face him. His hand moves to rest casually on your thigh, but he put a conscious effort to make it seem so. To make it natural. “That death is the coziest, comfiest little hole I could ever crawl in.”

Donnie’s face scrunches up. “That sounds like it sucks.”

Now, it’s your turn to be disgruntled. “Why? It’s cool.”

Donnie leans in, hands coming to interlace themselves under his chin. He misses how you follow his movement. “Because,” he says, “That would be so lonely.”

“I didn’t say it wasn’t,” you sit up fully. Your leg draw in– and you and Donnie Darko are now totally separate people, not tangled, not touching. Not connected. “I also didn’t say you had to be alone. You can have family around you, right? But wouldn’t that be terrible?”

Donnie doesn’t say anything, watching you try to translate your feelings into language. Into something he could understand. And that’s all he really wants– to be understood. To be understood by  _ you _ . For you to let him understand you in return. 

“Well, it’s just– everything goes away in the end. I could’ve been a saint, gave away all my shit, and been just the sweetest little fucker in the whole wide world, but what would that get me? Or, I could be a greedy little fuck and nothing would ever happen to me, nothing that really lasts. Nothing that really matters. Who’s gonna remember that in a hundred years? I’m still gonna be in a pine box, being the combo with fries and a drink for a bunch of worms,” you explain, picking at your nails faster now. Sliding your nails into the opposing nail bed, cleaning it, scratching it, hurting it. “I’m not Caesar. I’m not Confucius. I’m just me.”

Donnie swallows and the walls of his bedroom seem to breathe and shiver around him. 

“Hey, are you okay?”

Shimmering, tightening, strangling wallpaper. 

“It’s just pointless,” you ignore him, “to worry about anything at all. Alone, not alone, what’s the difference. We all go together when we go, you know? At least, it all ends the same... Everything moves so fast and everyone wants so many stupid, impossible things, and death, it… it just seems so peaceful. Quiet.” Your breath hitches. “ _ Dark _ .”

Donnie wants to lean in. Wants to touch you. There’s an air around you that pushes him away, and it’s funny; he knows everything about you, every part of you, and still you push him away. You hurt yourself like this a lot.

Donnie touches you.

He touches your forearm, moving to his knees to be closer to you. 

“I don’t think that’s true,” he says and slowly dances his fingers along your arm. “I don’t think that’s true at all.”

There’s a kind of foxfire in your eyes that burns bright and hateful when he says that. Burns because he  _ dare _ disagree with you, the Donnie you trusted  _ dares _ to take away that bit of serenity you had. Before you can pull away, Donnie continues, tries to open the air and make the walls fall away.

“I think it matters to have people around you. My therapist–” Donnie says, laughing a little because since when did he give out her advice? “My therapist, she says that what’s important is the relationships we have. The feelings we experience. What other people make us feel, and what we make them feel. That we die alone but we touch the lives of those around us. That’s what keeps us from being by ourselves, at the core of it all… I don’t want to be alone, and I don’t think you want to be alone either.”

“It doesn’t matter–”

“But it  _ does _ . If you di– if something happened to you, I’d miss you.” Donnie says quietly. His fingers have travelled over the backs of your hands, and he makes a choice. Donnie carefully pushes his fingers to your hand, threads through the spaces where your fingers aren’t. He holds you warm, firm, and just a little scared. 

“I wouldn’t be here in a hundred years. No one would write about me, either. But I’d think of you. I’d think of you every day.” 

  
  


His parents have gone to sleep. His sisters are in their own rooms, dreaming away of all the fun and action that girls dream. The house is quiet and the neighborhood is still except for the occasional dog whine and the silken rustle of the wind through trees. Donnie can hear his heartbeat and he wonders if you can hear it too. 

He kind of wants you to. If you hear it, maybe you could understand him a little better. He’s afraid, right now. He’s afraid but he’s excited. He wants you to know that, too.

You speak finally, small as a mouse and hand limp under his. “You’d think about me?”

“I think about you now,” he admits. “I don’t think that would change.”

“Oh,” you say, and nothing else. 

Donnie is about to pull away from you. Of course he would fuck this up. You matter too much.

“I think about you, too.”

“You do?”

“Yeah,” you say.

“Why?”

You laugh and it’s bitter. “How should I know? I just think about you.”

“Well,” Donnie says, moving closer on his bed to you, pushing  _ Misery _ out of the way. “I know why I think about you.”

“Do tell,” you say with a slight purr, trying to gain control over the conversation. Donnie knows control is important to you. That you need it. He takes a deep breath, and resigns to the thought that you would just have to let go of control long enough for him to fuck up your friendship beyond repair. 

“I think about you a lot. And remember what I said about my therapist, about making people feel a certain way around you? Well,” Donnie clears his throat and tries to make this the least embarrassing way possible. “You make me feel good. I think about that, when I think about you.”

Your eyes widen and he feels your hand come to life under him, not exactly holding him back, but brushing against him. 

“I like you,” Donnie says.

He didn’t lie about that. He also didn’t lie about how you make him feel good– but he doesn’t want to delve into the implications of that right now. He meant your friendship and care for him meant a lot– not that you give him physical pleasure… but that’s not something he would honestly be able to deny. He’s attracted to you. He’s thought about you, while he lies in bed with nothing to do and a frustration to kill. 

“I like you a lot.”

You tense up.

Then let yourself have a moment of sweetness. Just one moment where you don’t punish yourself.

The walls open up.

You turn Donnie’s palm over and squeeze, bringing it into your lap. Then, you lean in and kiss him. 

Your lips slide over his, and the kiss itself is dry and unsure. As soon as you kiss him, Donnie reciprocates with an immediate passion, bringing his free hand up to cup the back of your head and press you closer to him.

Then, the kiss turns into something else. You don’t realize your eyes are closed until they bug open when Donnie pulls you up into him, nearly into his lap. You let loose a surprised moan before melting back into the kiss, and he groans loud and filthy at that. Your hands untangle from his to cling to his chest but the movement sends you off balance– the two of you careen into his pillows, and he rolls on top of you before the collapse. 

For some reason, the entire situation is absurd. It feels funny, sticky like a honey that won’t leave your fingers; you feel dizzy and lightheaded from all the impossible feelings Donnie’s given you.

“Fuck,” Donnie laughs, “I can’t tell you how long I’ve wanted to do that.”

“I like you a lot too, Donnie,” you throw your head back and bubbles of laughter spill from your chest, “I really like you, too.”

“So,” Donnie leans over you and his breath warms your lips, “what does this mean?”

_ Are we going together? _ He wants to ask, but he can’t. You have control now. It’s important to you. You’re important to him.

“Hmm,” you hum. You arch up to kiss him again and he obliges, pressing into you with warmth and heat. His lips move smoothly over yours, a suck here, a touch of teeth there– you’re delighted to find he’s such a good kisser. You wonder if he’s had much practice. 

Donnie’s hand finds your waist and the thought crosses his mind that it looks beautiful on you. He does. Framing the picture of you with himself, a burst of fondness presses through the teenage lovesick haze at the forefront of his mind. He leans down closer, his forearm above your head bent and fingers tangling with your hair, guiding the kiss in ways that squeeze pretty little sounds out of you. Sounds that fill him with pride and desire to make you make more of them.

Your hands are crossed around his back, tracing sweetness over his shoulder blades, when the wet and smooth of his tongue slides through the seam of your lips and you gasp. It pulls you away from the kiss, smiling. Donnie doesn’t pull away. Instead, he follows you down into the pillows and watches how you smile, the light that fills your face. He presses a sneaky kiss or two to the corner of your lips and jaw. 

His hair hangs softly over his eyes and you run your hands through it, brushing it up and away to see his face. His blue eyes are frosted over but he looks at you with such warmth and softness; if he looked at you this way, just moments before… Without a declaration, without a kiss, without him lowering his defences so you could lower yours– the softness in his eyes would have killed you. 

Before, you would have pushed him away. Iced him out and started the whole, self-punishing dance all over again. 

Now, you let yourself hold his face. He turns his head to kiss your palm, but his gaze doesn’t leave you for a second. You sigh with a peace you thought you’d never feel.

“I think this means,” you kiss him once more, “We don’t have to be alone.”

  
  


**Author's Note:**

> Requests? Send them over to my tumblr (sweetdeathwrites) and say you came from AO3! Leave a comment if you enjoyed! Thanks!


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